The Power of the Robes
I’m very excited to share with you my 33 Robe Project. It started out as a smaller project in 1999, when I created 7 sacred robes to tell our common human story of the soul’s journey of awakening.
Similar to Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”, I wanted to tell the story of our heroic journey through life with the help of robes that people could put on and literally “try on a new possibility” for their life.
When people step into a robe, they get involved in their own story-making so they can become the storyteller or author of their own life. The robe also feels like a new sacred skin and activates a beautiful, deeper and fuller version of yourself!
Sacred robes have been important for thousands of years and in many different spiritual traditions. They are used for meditation, ceremony, ritual and personal transformation.
When someone steps into the Compassion Robe for example (seen in the photo below on the far right), they intentionally choose to try on the quality of Compassion. This sincere intention gives them access to the storehouse of spiritual compassion and they receive the benefit of the compassionate energy held within he robe itself.
Each robe is a key, a door, an access point to that particular spiritual quality. Once you have opened the door, you can access spiritual compassion and utilize that energy for your own spiritual evolution.
How did I come to this project?
Years ago, when I was living in London, I was sitting in a small cafe talking to a friend about our human journey of spiritual awakening. I was telling him my idea to teach this archetypal journey in a creative, embodied way, when a vision unfolded before my eyes.
I saw a large, round sacred space, like a Temple, made of beautiful, rich, black cloth. Around the outside of the “cloth Temple” I saw sacred figures, like spiritual guides, telling the story of how we wake up to our true self and return to the divine source.
These figures came alive on a series of robes circling around the Temple so that when you walked around the entire structure, you could experience the entire journey and remember your true purpose and destiny.
I understood this to be the Living Temple, a universal symbol of our human journey through life. I was then inspired to recreate this Living Temple by designing and creating 7 Sacred Robes and composing a performance piece of the Soul’s journey with the Robes, music, drumming and dance.
I spent the next 15 years creating the robes and teaching the journey of awakening. I created 7 robes to teach the Tree of Life path of awakening and a set of 5 robes exclusively for women’s initiation.
I have been traveling around the world with my Initiation Robes and hundreds of people have tried them on, performed rituals and sacred ceremonies, danced, drummed and chanted in the Sacred Robes. They have been to sacred sites in Crete, Italy, England, Scotland, Spain, France, Japan, Morocco, Thailand and Mexico. They have been blessed by ancient stone circles, temples and sacred groves.
Completing the 33 Robes
I thought the project was complete……. But then, 18 months ago, I was in Italy on spiritual retreat and received a vision to create a total set of 33 robes. What? It was one of those moments, “Spirit, are you sure? 33?”
(For the full story of what happened, see my previous blog, which you can read here.)
So I am in the midst of completing this huge project. When the project is complete, I will have the entire set of 33 robes and we will all have access to 33 spiritual qualities that can accelerate our spiritual evolution so we can become the radiant beings we were created to be.
Every week I’ll be documenting my process through the project, including photos of the painting process and more info about each of the robes.
I just finished painting the Joy robe and here is a preview photo of the painting process. Next week, I’ll tell you more about the spiritual quality of JOY and about the actual painting process.
(Photo by Lisa Winston www.ljwdivinesight.us)
Blessings, Megan